I continually debate different methods of automotive seo with a close friend of mine that I met online.  He is against automation in principal for seo purposes and for the most part I am too.  A completely organic presence from content and developing linking partners is really the best way to avoid any kind of penalties from the search engines.  However that is not how the web works.

Especially in automotive automation is the key.  Most of the true authority sites, as far as marketing dealers inventory, rely on automation.  Autotrader.com, Cars.com and AOL Autos would not exist in their current form if it were not for automation.  The very basic fact that they aggregate information that is already available online by pulling feeds of dealers inventory mixed with some basic unique content that is basically repurposed reviews.

Even big players such as Google and Commission Junction facilitate the ability to create automated content via their affiliate networks by providing product data feeds to affiliate marketers.  Which allows them to build out complete websites with little or no original content.

The automated web is here to stay, it will be around for as long as I am alive.  Blogging is replacing some of the automation that is so prevalent however it will never eclipse the amount of content that is produced daily in an automated fashion.

We have been working on ways to tie automation into blogging platforms to help dealers sell more cars, a good example of this is a site we built targeting Texas direct auto auctions.  We are pulling in feeds from ebay and interspersing original content to keep our content unique.  This is not the only type of automated content we are testing however we are not ready to share it at this point in time.  We will compile data through the end of the year and publish a case study outlining our successes and failures.

Part of what my company does as an automotive seo firm is help dealers drive traffic to their offers.  Because dealers can post inventory to a multitude of locations we have found ways to take non unique automotive content, make it unique to drive traffic back to their offers.  We do this in a variety of very different ways.

One of the the ways we do this is to pull listings for dealers that use our craigslist posting service to create dealer microsite listings of individual inventory items you can see an example of these listings on this microsite for a Cincinnati Ford dealer.  This brings in an incredible amount of long tail traffic and pushes traffic back directly to the dealers telephone and primary marketing site.

Another thing that we are working on is using the ebay api to generate listing sites promoting clients and non clients inventory in the search engines.  An example of what we have done for a client is this site which targets Greenville Chevy shoppers it has no other ads other than the dealers ebay inventory while another example is a site we created targeting traffic looking for Texas Direct Auto auctions it has external third party advertising which helps pay for it’s cost and upkeep.

These sites once they are properly indexed will also provide traffic back to external client properties, which will drive traffic and search relevance.  It is a win win for all.  The nice thing abut the ebay model sites is that they provide some income whether for a client or just to have additional external properties from ebay commissions.  Even for the clients who we help market their inventory using this model they see a serious increase in ebay traffic.

We are starting to notice an increase from traffic from twitter.  The only thing we can attribute this to is the indexing of individual tweets.  So I am going to run an experiment to see if we can get tweets to index for chosen keywords.  The first target will be a fairly competitve long tail search for “Social Media Priorities” .

Because we cannot optimize an individual tweet other than the keywords we use in it we will have to d this via link building.  The only downfall to this strategy is that the twitter index could be rebuilt at anytime, however if this strategy works we see many ways to apply this for our clients.

The core of our business is Internet marketing for car dealers and we can see this helping to drive more traffic to our Cincinnati Ford dealer and NC Chevy dealer.  I see this as a way to give them another level in the search engines.  While I do not believe that search engine traffic from twitter will be very high volume every little layer will help.

I was the first person to use wordpress to build out dealer microsites and others have jumped onto the bandwagon.  Fortunately for my clients (unfortunate for me) I have to spend my time making sure assets we provide them are converting and driving them leads and I do not spend a bunch of time publishing “case studies”.

We have been working on a rapid deployment process with highly customizable themes using wordpress as a cms.  One we built out for a North Carolina Chevy Dealer is only a few days old and is already driving traffic on competitive dealer names and other markets/dealer searches like Greenville Chevy dealer.  The other is a more established property for a Cincinnati Ford Dealer.  We are now able to launch similar sites like these for dealers in less than 24 hours and are working on several other adaptations now.

The themes we using to do this is a cross of a premium wordpress theme and our customization.  The process we have used to do this is quite easy once we made the proper edits to be able to deploy them rapidly.  Eventually we will have a subscription based offering for dealers to deploy them using dealership personel or a set price for a several new sites per month set up by us.

One thing you will not find on these microsites is social media buttons.  Mainly because we feel this will be a way for competiton to actually place a dealers marketing material in jeaporady.  You can read more about that in a story I did about Dealer.com Social Media Buttons.

I have been watching the Land Rover campaign and their claimed success on Twitter.com.  There are opinions on both sides as how this type of promotion is met by users of the platform.  Many are claiming it a raging success some, myself included, feel like it was an ill conceived idea and even one blogger was not so sure.  One of the best articles discussing the campaign was by JD Rucker at Drivingsales.com.

Social media and social networking are great ways for companies and individuals to build a brand and develop a following.  The thing that is often overlooked is it is an engagement tool not a way just to get the word out.  Sure you can advertise using social media, companies and marketers do it everyday.  The question that I would have to ask myself before subjecting my twitter followers, who have made a conscience decision to follow me, to me sending links to promote a brand is “How does that apply to me?” or “Do I really find value in this?” and I would have to answer that question first before recommending content, not just for a little bit of payola.

Nowhere did I see Land Rover participating in the #lrny tag party.  They missed a golden opportunity to connect with others and build lasting relationship for their efforts.  The sad truth is it is doubtful that many if any of the people tweeting about the campaign went to the show or for that fact even been inside of a Land Rover.  It completely detracts from the credibility of the campaign.  Now if it were about an Infiniti G37, a car in the reach of many, it would of possibly been better received.

]]> http://www.netmarketing101.info/automotive-digital-marketing/lrny-was-it-all-that/feed/ 0 http://www.netmarketing101.info/automotive-digital-marketing/automotive-seo-malpractice-from-pcg/ http://www.netmarketing101.info/automotive-digital-marketing/automotive-seo-malpractice-from-pcg/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:33:52 +0000 Paul http://netmarketing101.info/?p=196

Pasch Consulting Group has been performing Automotive SEO malpractice with their aggressive personal marketing style.  It looks like they think ranking for their clients name brings them value to their company.

The most basic marketing principals are being violated in this type search engine optimization. Consumers searching for a dealer by name do not want to see how some company worked to capture their click. Some consumers may go as far researching the company that the dealership has hired. Once they realize that they are the same people associated with Millennium Teleservices (more here) and Civic Development Group (more here) they may decide to look for another NJ Infiniti dealer.

When you are marketing for a client the last thing you want to do is steal traffic from them especailly for basic name searches.  When building links to a clients site it should be from an automotive centered website or directory style listing not your marketing site and if you do use their name in your marketing it should be done in such a way as to not optimize for the clients name just your services.

We are currently building up a blog farm with evergreen content to accentuate other link building activity for our clients.  Most of the content is about product updates and news from the manufacturers repurposed to show natural linking to the clients sites from the proper vertical.

I do Automotive SEO for a few select dealers direct and as a service provider for a couple of other firms I still enjoy affiliate marketing. I have already produced a few very profitable affiliate landing pages using squidoo but now I wish to step it up a notch.

Right now I am working on implementing a huge blog network and have hired content writers to help manage it. The network in of itself will be used as assets to help seo client’s websites but they will also pay their on weight as well. What this means is the content cost, hosting and domain cost will be covered by the onsite advertising and CPA offers.

The primary mechanisms for the income will be affiliate networks and adsense. Not a real novel idea but that is how it is done.

The network will cover 50 blogs to start with all pushing links to clients sites and affiliate landing pages for localized traffic in select markets and national traffic. The network in of itself can actually make zero dollars and I will be happy as long as the affiliate properties cover the weight.

One of the landing pages that was just created is actually quite ugly but the goal is for a high bounce rate with conversion on the ads or cpa offers. You can see the one I created targeting New Jersey G37 Infiniti.  Eventually this site will rank really well for all models of Infiniti cars targeting used car traffic and local Infiniti dealer terms in select markets.  This is just one example of 200 of these type properties in the works.

The roll out will be slow because the network needs to be in place first to help support this many properties where as the small network I have now really is used specifically for clients.  An example of these network sites will be like Domestic Auto Report.

Automotive SEO is not rocket science. It entails just three elements that if worked in conjunction with each other properly you can own your market area. I am a firm believer that the current dealer website model is flawed and dealers need to look beyond having just one piece of online real estate or have multiple mediums to attract buyers, but I digress…

One of the biggest mistakes I have seen is how Automotive SEOs market themselves. As so elegantly stated by Chip at www.dealerrater.com

“The best non-dealer SEO’s that I know of, don’t even have websites; referrals and results drive their business.” at Dealerrefresh.com

You do not use client success stories as part of your marketing pitch in an open setting especially if it identifies the keywords you are targeting for them. This does two things:

• Competing with the client for the click – Potentially the SEO’s marketing material can compete directly with the clients and siphon traffic from them. This could also potentially alienate the average consumer and cause them to look for a different company to spend their money with. Customers hate marketing for the most part and telling them how you captured their click because of an aggressive online marketing campaign is just bad form.
• Inviting Competition -  This can happen in many forms from other SEOs and/or affiliate marketers.  An aggressive SEO could create multiple affiliate properties around the keywords you flaunt and steal your clients traffic and increase their cost.  Because most automotive search terms are localized it is not a formidable task.  This will force the Automotive SEO practictioner to lose their effectivness in that market area and either seek out the other site owner for links or the client does that and has to spend even more money or change providers.

Being deeply trenched in the auto industry, as an online marketing partner with dealerships across the country, it is funny to watch how it fails and works inside this very tight niche. There are tons of service providers and solution partners and most are always at each others throats due to the nature of the car business and the fickleness of dealers.

Just recently I collaborated with a quasi competitor, an automotive crm software provider, on different aspects of our business. When discussing this arrangement with close friends in the auto industry they all said this is unheard of. It was comical to say the least when others asked me why help them and why would they help you.

Online networking is a give and take proposition and that is why the car business is having such a hard time with it. It puts people out of the dog eat dog environment and into a collaborative mode, it breaks status quo.

I have had recent experiences with some of the larger vendors that are sickening, because I dispelled a myth they preach, then after they offered to educate me have failed to hold up their end of the bargain. But then again they are still drinking their dealer.com search engine marketing cool aid!!

• Are you paying for prime rib and being served mass produced burgers from a third world country?
• Is the service you are receiving comparable to the price you are paying for it?
• Are you paying a premium for “service” and when calling for help sitting on hold to only find out something you want can’t be done or will incur additional charges?

The real question is are you paying for a maitre d’ and the only time you hear from your provider is when they have a new offering or it is initiated by you for service that has to run through multiple channels?

The difference between a partner and a provider are huge.

• A partner helps you become more successful and their success is dependent upon yours.
• A provider sells you their product for you to leverage and your success is dependent how the product is utilized.

The problem lies in when a provider bills themselves as a partner to justify the cost and then moves you through their process to deliver their cookie cutter solution, mass produced hamburgers, and delivers the bill on a silver platter.  We would not tolerate it in a restaurant but every day I see dealers accepting it with various providers.

I was amazed when I contacted a website provider for support for a dealer client to only find out that support would take three days to add a form to a custom page, the dealer spends over $100K per year and is tied to a contract.  This was after going to top level contacts inside the company.  Another consultant experienced a website provider claiming SEO work as their own.  (See my automotive website predictions for 2009 to get the details)

In the coming year we will see some established accepted practices by automotive vendors fade from existence as dealers become more educated and learn to hold automotive vendors accountable by demanding value for their money with service levels commensurate with cost. A partner will over deliver a provider gives you widgets to work with.  Quit overpaying for widgets disguised as a partnership and a long term high priced contract should deliver more than excuses with mediocre service and results.

Paul Rushing

912-266-1629

www.ismintraining.com “Believer in all things possible”

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